The Time War
by The Master of Time
Summary: Little glimpses of events before, during and after The Last Great Time War, that basically are references from or to novel, audio or televised stories. If you have any extra information about events in the Time War, contact me. T for safety. Enjoy
1. Going Beyond Survival

"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream."

"People made of smoke, and cities made of song."

"Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold!"

"Come on, Ace! We've got work to do!"

20,000 years later

"EX-TER-MIN-ATEEEE!"

The Dalek catchphrase. They never got tired of saying that. The Doctor did though.

He ran down the spaceship's corridor, holding his question mark umbrella in one hand, and his cream hat in the other. The corridor, circular in shape, with the only flat edge as the floor, and the occasional flat side-wall for a doorway, was one of the thousands of corridors on the time vessel Quanton 5.

This particular timevessel was owned by the Zenobians. From the planet Zenobia, They were very similar to humans, in fact, except they were all slightly taller, green skinned with green hair, had a pair of blue antennae atop their heads, themselves topped with green spheres. Think Greedo and Yoda from Star Wars being involved in a freak science experiment- and the Zenobians were the result. They were a peaceful race, if slightly odd. They spoke English, albeit with a slight lisp, and were dedicated pacifists, never involving themselves in wars of any kind. Not even when the Anubians, the natives from their twin planet Anubia, had a war with their past enslavers, the Huducts.

Even though the Zenobians were famous for their obsession with pacifism, the Daleks still hated them. Just like they hated every other species in the Universe. And now they had invaded one of their timevessels, and the Doctor, just passing by, had noticed this, and had decided to infiltrate the ship.

The Time Lord turned a corridor, hid behind a jutted-out bit of wall, and waited silently. The trio of Daleks following him slid past, their eyestalks waving wildly side to side, looking for their arch-enemy.

The three Daleks continued down the corridor, and eventually the front Dalek paused, and spun around to face the other two.

"WE HAVE LOST THE DOC-TOR." the pair of Daleks reported.

"COR-RECT! WE NEED TO SPLIT UP AND RE-LO-CATE HIM!" replied the lead Dalek. His black paint shimmered in the lights above it, and he looked to the left. "YOU WILL TURN A-ROUND AND SEARCH THE LEFT CORRIDOR!"

"I O-BEY!" The left Dalek turned and headed down the corridor, following his leader's orders. Black's eyestalk suddenly turned to the right. "YOU WILL SEARCH THE RIGHT!" He shouted, his earlights flashing madly "I O-BEY!" The right Dalek replied, then turned and trundled off as well. Black's eyestalk shifted from left to right, watch his two subjects doing his bidding. But Black couldn't rest, and put his faith totally on his workers. HE had to look for the Time Lord and his Human companion BEFORE the others did. He'd rather die than be humiliated. So, he continued down the corridor.

The Doctor poked his head out into the corridor, grinning as he saw Black drive by. He skipped across the corridor, and knelt down to an air-conditioning shaft opening. "Ace! They've gone!" He hissed angrily into the vent. Ace said something, but it was muffled by the vent's grille.

"What? I cannot understand you through this grrrille!" The Doctor rrrolled his 'R's, in his usual Scottish way.

Ace moaned, and tapped the grille's metal bars, pinging each one louder than the last. The Doctor growled, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver, knelt down and attempted to look through the grille at his companion. "If I use this, the Daleks will hearrr it, and they'll come looking!"

Ace moaned again. "But if you don't get me out, I'll be trrrapped in 'ere, Professor!" This time the Doctor heard. "Neverrr mock my accent!" "Alrigh', just get me outta here!" The Doctor sighed, and held the sonic towards the grille's screws. He actuated the sonic, and the red tip vibrated just slightly. After a moment, the screw jumped out of its socket, and he did the same for the other three.

Eventually, the vent shield was loose, and Ace slapped it onto the floor, making it clatter loudly.

"Ace!" The Doctor growled again.

Ace pulled herself out of the vent, and took the Doctor's hand, thanking him as he pulled her up...

"Do you have any Nitro-9 left?" He asked his companion

"Yeah, 'ere.." Ace shrugged off her rucksack, and took out a pair of silver deodorant cans. "Considerin' you hate these, Professor, they aren't 'alf useful."

"Yes, yes. You keep saying that. Now, get rrready. Eventually, the Daleks should come back." He then hesitated, then spoke in a serious tone. "Did you see any survivors?"

"No, I'm sorry, Professor. The Daleks killed them all."

The Doctor mouthed "It's OK.", and put his hand on Ace's shoulder.

"TIME LORD!" The two bronze Daleks screamed behind them. The Doctor and Ace gasped simultaneously, and The Doctor's hand fell from Ace's shoulder. They turned around to face the two Daleks.

"You just neverrr stop, do you?" The Doctor approached.

"YOU DES-TROYED SKA-RO! WE DE-SERVE RE-VENGE!" Shouted Black behind them. Now the Doctor was in trouble. One big, important Dalek on one side, and two other Daleks on the other. So, he improvised, and start to constantly turn from Black to the other two.

"You deserve rrrevenge?" He turned.

"You are the most brrrutal killers in the universe!" He turned again.

"You will NEVER deserve ANYTHING!" He turned a third time.

"WE ARE THE DA-LEKS!" Shouted the two.

"WE ARE THE SU-PREME BEINGS!" Shouted Black.

"Yeah, yeah, you keep sayin' that, don't ya?" Ace scoffed.

"SI-LENCE, FE-MALE!" Shouted all three Daleks.

"Silence, yerself!" Ace pouted at the Daleks.

This angered the Daleks again. Black's blue eyelight grew from a small octagonal shape, to a full-bodied circle, and eyed Ace carefully, moving forwards slowly, yet menacingly.

"I-DEN-TI-FY YOUR-SELF, HU-MAN!" Black screamed at Ace.

"I'm Ace." Ace walked slowly towards Black. "Ace, be careful!" The Doctor raised his hand towards her.

"YOU ARE THE DOC-TOR'S COM-PAN-I-ON, COR-RECT?"

"Yeah, 'guess so..."

"YOU ARE VE-RY... STRONG WILLED!"

"Thanks, I guess." The Doctor barged in front of Ace, and stared into Black's eyelight, the blue glow shining onto his face. "What are you doing?"

"I AM MERE-LY HAV-ING A CON-VER-SA-TION WITH YOUR COM-PAN-I-ON"

"Why? What is the point of that? All you're good at is killing. You neverrr engage irrelevant chit-chat with humans!"

Black paused, then shuffled back. The Doctor laughed at this.

"No matterrr how many civilisations you hurt, no matterrr how many species you slaughter... you are still as scared of me as you have ever been!"

Black growled, in a way only he knew how.

"And another thing, Daleks!" The Doctor turned around again. "What are you still doing here? You've killed the Zenobians, and there's no point in taking this timevessel to Zenobia, the engines are only just support our life support systems. And even if you diverted the power back the warp engines, killing me and Ace in the process, there still won't be enough power to go there! You might as well exit the ship and fly there under your own power! So what are you doing here?"

Black paused again.

"IT HAS BEEN..." The Doctor could hear the reluctancy in the Dalek's electronic, distorted voice.

"FORSEEN. IT IS PART OF DA-LEK DEST-I-NY." This puzzled the Doctor. Since when were the Daleks led by fate?

"YOU ARE AL-SO PART OF THAT DEST-I-NY. HOWEVER, YOUR COM-PAN-I-ON IS NOT! EX-TER-MIN-ATE THE HU-MAN!"

The two Bronze Daleks blasted Ace, her arms raised in utter pain, and her skeleton, visible, and glowing a green glow. She collapsed onto the floor, and the Doctor stared at her dead body, for a few moments. However, he couldn't mourn. The Daleks were near him, and he would never trust them, even if they admitted that they wouldn't kill him.

So he ran. Luckily, he was having a good day with the corridors, and quickly found his TARDIS hidden in an alcove. He took out his key, and opened the door. He looked out towards where he had ran from, and saw an old-fashioned painting, named "Queen Zenobia's Last Look Upon Palmyra" None of the Zenobians knew why, but they were named after the 3rd Century Syrian queen, called Zenobia. The Doctor sighed. "Queen Syria: People thought of many reasons of your death, but no one knew you went back home, and lived forever, as the Zenobian Queen."

The Doctor sighed "I'm sorry, Ace. I'm so sorry."

He entered the TARDIS, closed the door, and the TARDIS slowly dematerialised.


	2. Memories

The Doctor, now in his eighth body, walked across the main Tardis room. He was partly dressed in the clothes he'd found in the American hospital he regenerated in.

"Humph" The Doctor 'humphed'. From then on, he'd always had a dislike for hospitals after that.

But he did have the fondness of his clothing. The green velvet jacket. The brownish waistcoat. The cravat. Oh, how he loved cravats. The Doctor knew that he had a thing for neck wear. Cravats and neck-ties and bow-ties. And sometimes even scarves. And sometimes just sticks of celery. He knew celery could never be classed as neck wear, but he knew that celery and cricket outfits worked together well.

He didn't know why, but he was in a reminiscing mood.

He remembered how he first got this Tardis model. He had gone home. Back to Gallifrey. To Lungbarrow. To his family.

It was an odd family, with a lot of secrets, lies and deceit. When the Doctor arrived there, he had temporarily severed the links between the two dimensions of his Tardis, so that it wouldn't be stolen off him.

After a big, family adventure, the house had demolished itself, and when he rejoined the links, the Tardis had needed to go through a bit of a renovation, and it decided to style itself on the house.

He was fond of this new Tardis, but he still missed the old one. He missed so many people.

Ace had been exterminated. Katarina was sucked into an airlock. Adric crashed a Cybership.

And he also missed more recent companions. Even the weirder ones. For God's sake, he had travelled with a Cyberman, an Ice Warrior!

The Doctor stopped for a moment.

He was never usually this involved with his past. 

He was constantly running. 

All his life. 

Just running. 

He ran away from the Untempered Schism. 

He ran away from Gallifrey. 

He ran away from time.

And he ran away from death itself.

The Doctor screamed in pain, and stumbled onto the Tardis's console.

"What on Earth? ..No. What in the.. The Universe?" Something was interfering with his memory. Yes, this was the most complex one so far, with so many paradoxes and illusions, but it was the only Eighth life he'd ever have.

But something was hurting him. Was it the power of the vortex slowly killing him when he destroyed the Cybermen with Destrii? Or was it his lost memory of how he destroyed the Vore and brought back Gallifrey was first destroyed, trying to return to him?

Suddenly, the pain died down again. It still bubbled in his mind, like a hidden headache, but it didn't hurt as much.

* * *

He jogged through the Tardis, trying to take his mind off the pain, and he entered a room. He looked at and smiled at the Eye. He'd never known that the Eye had always been in his Tardis, like it was in every Tardis. He wondered why... how... the Master knew there was an Eye in every Tardis. Nobody was ever told, and the Master was not one for exploration.

He smiled again. His first adventure. Saving America on the last day of the 20th Century. How the Master managed to survive his destruction, he never knew. He knew the Master had used a Deathworm. Or a Morphant. Whichever name you wanted to call it. But he didn't know that the Master _KNEW_ of them.

* * *

"So it is settled then." Announced the Lady President Romanadvoratrelundar.

"This is 'The Act of Master Restitution'. As part of this Dalek/Time Lord peace treaty, The Act entails that the Time Lord known as the Master will be destroyed once and for all, by the Daleks, on Skaro. His remains shall be kept in a secret place on Gallifrey, and they shall be taken from Skaro to Gallifrey by the Time Lord known as the Doctor. Any objections?"

Romana searched the Panopticon for any sign of disapproval. She had been the "President of the Supreme Council of Gallifrey and all of her Dominions" ever since the Time War with the Enemy. Because of the Doctor's interference, the Second War in Heaven, as it was known, never really existed. But she knew she had regenerated into a more ruthless incarnation than her previous two, to prepare for it.

* * *

Why was the Doctor remembering that? Something was forcing his memories to be relived in his mind, but what was it, and _why_?

Something was making him think. 

Something was making him remember. 

Something was making his head ache unbelievably.

Then he realised...

Something was happening. This memory was possibly a foreshadowing. Knowing his luck, a future version of this incarnation, or just a future incarnation altogether, would be making him remember, in order to make something happen. An ontological paradox. Or a predestination paradox. He didn't know. He was fed up with paradoxes consuming his eighth life. But someone... some_thing_... was causing this paradox to happen. 

Was it Romana? 

Was it the annoying Mafia/time-travel cult/voodoo tribe known as the Faction Paradox? 

Was it the Master? 

OR 

Was it ... Himself?

He looked up towards a TV screen, placed conveniently on a stand in one of the walls in the corridor in which he now stood. It was styled in the same way as the screen adjoined to the console, but was slightly smaller. These screens were littered around the Tardis's countless amount of corridors.

On the screen, it revealed something that made his hearts tremble...


	3. The Secrets of the Daleks

...A room.

Silent, except for a repetitive two-tone throbbing.

Empty, except for millions of blue lights.

In the largest, centre blue light, which was more like a fluorescent globe, dark smoke floated around in its centre, gathering into an imagine.

An image of a man. A man beyond his time. A man with long, swooping brown hair, and beneath this, eyes that knew everything, but yet nothing. This man was in pain, and this man knew pain, but yet was still unsure about this pain. It was a new pain. His memories ached. His hearts burned. His eyes stung.

The highest, second biggest blue orb looked towards the other blue lights.

"HE HAS BEEN LO-CA-TED" A big, bassy metallic voice boomed.

"Excellent. Our plan is going smoothly." Said another voice, one almost human, but with a croaky hint of insanity.

"In his pre-vi-ous in-car-na-tion, his clo-sest com-pan-i-on, known as Ace, was ex-ter-min-a-ted by our ad-vanced guards." screeched a third, tinny voice.

"I thank you, Prime. And how are the interplanetary survivors of Antalin?"

"OUR CRE-A-TIONS HAVE DES-TROYED THEM ALL. ON-LY THE TIME LORD KNOWS OF THE TRUTH."

"And he shall be the one who begins this War. This War to end billions of lives. Billions of times. The Time Lords will never suspect a thing."

The croaky voice laughed a deranged laugh.

"The Doctor will be killed! There will be Hell! There will be blood! And we will win!"

Davros had realised. The Fourth Doctor's actions, almost destroying his precious race, could lead to a future War. A massive war between his Gallifreyan rivals and his children of the machines. A war that people could manipulate with time... killing, going backwards into time, then killing again, on a giant scale, creating almost an infinite amount of paradoxes.

A large, 3D hologram of the Doctor in his Tardis hovered in the centre, surrounded by millions of Daleks, with the three creatures, known as Dalek Prime, the Dalek Emperor, and Davros were placed on tall pedestals.

These Daleks, although with new paint-jobs, earlights, and lights in their eyestalks, were still the same as ever. But they were more strategic. More scientific, more supreme... but they were so much more Dalek.

And just a little bit sneakier. They had secretly watched everything the Doctor had done in his previous incarnations. Hiding in the shadows of a million planets, watching a billion souls doing a trillion things. And their spying had definitely come to fruition. They had discovered that their arch-nemesis, in his fourth body, almost put them to extinction before they even existed, and Davros swore revenge. He had forgotten old grudges, and left new mutinies, to achieve all-round Dalek peace. His enemies, Dalek Prime, the Supreme Dalek, and even the old Emperor, had all agreed with the Kaled scientist: The Time Lord was a much bigger threat than any 'untrue' Dalek.

Davros laughed, croaking as insanely as ever.


	4. Thoughts

**Yeah, if you've been reading my other stories, you'll know that I've been off, obviously. If not, then you'll have at least one brain cell and realised I haven't posted anything for ages.**

**Family. School. Broken computer. That's all I can say. That's all I need to say.**

**And if you haven't already realised, there are -tiny- spoilers for just about every Eighth Doctor story in this. I haven't read/listened to every one, but I've been on ./ and read the important developments, e.g. "In this story, it is discovered why the Doctor loves cravats" or "It is revealed that The TARDIS has an acre-large wardrobe for this version of the TARDIS" or "[some companion] leaves/dies/gets married" et cetera... It'll just be the odd mention.**

**Anyway, on with the story.**

They had been watching him. That Doctor. That TARDIS. That hologram was reality for the Doctor, moments previously. Which meant that soon, his present would be known to the Daleks. He saw them now, and they would soon see that he could see them seeing him.

But that wasn't the worst thing. The worst thing was... it was coming true. He'd seen his future... Gallifrey destroyed. All the Time Lords dead. And him, in a new body.

One of the many curses of being a Time Lord. He could easily know the future, but his own future? It would be too horrific. And, being like most creatures in the universe, he wanted to avoid being in physical pain by any means. He knew this, as a man with a soul. But as a Time Lord, he knew he couldn't change his own destiny.

"One day. ONE. DAY." he hissed, through gritted teeth. He knew that he would be able to control his own destiny. He would be able to rewrite time.

But not yet.

He had seen the Daleks prepare. But now he had to see if the Time Lords were too. Which would mean that the Daleks would know, eventually, that the Time Lords were preparing. Unless the Time Lords too were watching him.

He had to watch every step. Which wasn't easy. He was the Doctor.

#######

Back in the control room, the Doctor poked and prodded the wooden, now-aged controls. One thing he kind of liked about his future was that he'd see a new TARDIS theme. Sure, this one was nice, but it didn't really suit him now. His first two or three had matched his old, Grandfatheriness. He'd had other console rooms too, though. An old, wooden secondary console room. A bony structure this Doctor had used against the Faction Paradox. And a few other versions he didn't care to remember.

Now, he had his grand, gothic, Victorian theme back, but this didn't suit this Doctor. He was a much darker, much less romantic Eighth Doctor. One, he was ashamed to admit, would horrify his earlier Eighth self.

"Time has changed. So have I" he muttered angrily.

He poked the Agron dis-continuation activator, and the TARDIS, almost sadly, lurched towards a place he never feared to tread nowadays.

A place he knew would soon be destroyed, for the last of many times.

A place he could never call home again.

Gallifrey.


End file.
